Dirty Secret: Hard to Tell When Government is Shut Down

The Obama Administration is doing its best to portray the “shutdown” of the federal government as a catastrophe, caused solely by the heartless, mean spirited, cheapskate curmudgeons in the Republican Party.  In his speech the president opened by mentioning the GOPs guilt in shutting down the federal government several times in the first minute, going as far as zeroing in on the Tea Party faction of the party.

The dirty little secret of the federal government is that most of it is bloat and fat, and provides no visible benefit to the American taxpayers.  In a “shutdown” like the one the country is experiencing, ‘non-essential’ personnel are furloughed, but essential workers are kept on the job.  The first question that arises from this policy is “Why are we even employing non-essential people in the federal government?”  The answer: the more non-productive people that are on the government dole, including its non-essential employee workforce, the more people that vote Democrat–to keep the money coming.  It’s truly that simple.

When the government goes unfunded in a shutdown, as it has 17 times since the 1970s, it continues to operate and provide essential services, including sending out checks to social security recipients, the disabled, veterans, etc.

All of this adds up to the reality that a government shutdown could go on for months–many months–and it would be hard to notice it.  This is a truth that the left seeks to hide at all costs.  If Americans get wind of this fact, the next thing they’ll want to do is keep their money and spend it on things they feel are important–and that would undo 100 years of leftist encroachments on American pocketbooks and liberties.

In fact, the president and his administration are pulling out all the stops to convince Americans that they are being hurt by the current shutdown.  They have gone to enormous expense to place barriers at national parks and monuments, to keep Americans away from their properties.  They are doing everything they can to make Americans feel as much pain as possible due to the shutdown.  Statesmen and public servants would do the opposite, of course, but these are not statesmen–they are power mongers, who harness political power by stealing the money and liberty of average citizens.  They care nothing about the general welfare, but only buying political loyalty through redistribution and welfare checks.

In several articles in the past year the Federalist Press has outlined the real power of constitutionalists in congress, which is provided to them by the Constitution itself.  It is the power of the purse.  Not one red penny gets spent in this country that is not authorized by the House of Representatives.  This is part of the power of Checks and Balances.  Let the President bring his brand of socialism to the country, and let a leftist court step aside and clear the skids for him.  No matter what mischief such despots attempt, unless the House of Representatives funds it, it won’t be implemented.

The House has not gone far enough.  As we have recommended several times, the Constitution demands that the House send a balanced budget (which contains only constitutionally mandated spending) to the Senate.  That’s it.  The House can go home after that.  The House need not negotiate with a leftist Senate, or a Socialist White House.

Will the president call it extremism?  Will he call it blackmail?  Yes–and who cares?  The American people hate ObamaCare, and this entire fight is about implementing a juggernaut bureaucracy that will doom the country to socialism for decades or centuries to come.  This is the real fight–for the soul of America–and Americans are behind the congress in this fight.

In reality, the Senate and President will be forced to sign whatever spending bill the House of Representatives sends them, because shut down of the entire government is the only option they have if they don’t go along.

With all of that power, one wonders why the House of Representatives has failed so miserably to reign in a burgeoning, activist federal government run amok.  Finally, the GOP has followed the Constitution.  American citizens stand behind you–so don’t let us down and cave in to the pressures brought by America’s domestic enemies.

PUBLIUS